vSphere datastore typical setup?

[romatlo32]

Hi folks,

Just curious how other folks setup their datastores?

We have several that have started out as 1.5 TB and keep increasing as needed.

Do folks typically have fewer but larger datastores/volumes?

Or see any benefit to having more datastores that are less and increase as you go?

Pic attached...

[sjesse]

This depends on your  buisness requirements. Smaller datastores with less in them are less likely to be a problem if you have to move all of the virtual machines out of there, but this increase managment overhead and possibly less space savings depending on how your storage array works. For example until a recent version netapp deduplicated the volumes but no the entire aggregate(group of disks), which meant the more volumes you had the less savings you would get. This is a common question I also ask regularly, and its usually somewhere in the middle of 1 big datastore to many small datastores. Ours are around 4.5 tb currently in one environment, but around 500gb to 1tb in another.

[diegodco31]

Hi

It depends on what exactly you have in mind or what the platform is used for.

VMware VMFS Datastore Sizing Calculator: VMware VMFS Datastore Sizing Calculator

https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/6.5/vsphere-esxi-vcenter-server-65-storage-guide.pdf

[romatlo32]

Thank y'all, great feedback.

We have a mix of server virtualization, about 50 W2K12R2 VMs and about 50 Win7 VDI VMs.

I will review the feedback/sites, and close this thread soon.